VI
Men will forget what we suffer, and not what we do; we can fight!
But to be soldier all day, and be sentinel all thro' the night—
Ever the mine and assault, our sallies, their lying alarms,
Bugles and drums in the darkness, and shoutings and soundings to
arms;
Ever the labor of fifty that had to be done by five;
Ever the marvel among us that one should be left alive;
Ever the day with its traitorous death from the loopholes around;
Ever the night with its coffinless corpse to be laid in the
ground;
Heat like the mouth of a hell, or a deluge of cataract skies,
Stench of old offal decaying, and infinite torment of flies,
Thoughts of the breezes of May blowing over an English field,
Cholera, scurvy, and fever, the wound that would not be healed;
Lopping away of the limb by the pitiful, pitiless knife—
Torture and trouble in vain-for it never could save us a life.
Valor of delicate women who tended the hospital bed;
Horror of women in travail among the dying and dead;
Grief for our perishing children, and never a moment for grief,
Toil and ineffable weariness, faltering hopes of relief;
Havelock baffled, or beaten, or butchered for all that we knew—
Then day and night, day and night coming down on the still
shatter'd walls
Millions of musket-bullets and thousands of cannon-balls;
But ever upon the topmost roof our banner of England blew.